Can Reality TV Revitalize Fashion Magazines For Teens?
Posted by casey on 07-15-2010
I still remember the first time I picked up an issue of Seventeen magazine. I was twelve years old, and it took some serious persuading on my part to convince my mom that I was old enough to read a magazine targeted to seventeen-year-old girls (My argument? Everyone knows you trade Seventeen for Cosmo the second your reach high school). But so began my love for magazines.. and aspirations to one day write for one. These days, however, with the shuttering of once-successful magazines and the catalog-thickness of still-existing ones, it's become the magazines themselves that have to do the convincing. Enter reality television.
"The Hills" brought serious buzz to Teen Vogue when Lauren Conrad and Whitney Port met as bubbly magazine "interns" for all the world to watch. Both girls moved on to bigger and better things — an intern budget can't support the fabulous lifestyles of reality stars. In "The City," Whitney's spinoff took a cue from their original success by enlisting another magazine in Elle. Although Elle was questioned for signing on to a pseudo-reality show like "The City," a weekly appearance on the small screen has brought such tremendous attention to the glossy and it has, almost single-handedly, turned from a publication into a brand. Last summer Elle sold more ad pages than Vogue for the first time in the magazine's 24-year history. Of course, there are more factors to Elle's recent success than a supporting role on "The City," but giving readers a sneak peek into the magazine's glamorous office and gorgeous staff certainly helps (Styleite believes their dynamic website and Twitter presence has a lot to do with it, too, and I wholeheartedly agree).
The takeaway is that fashion magazines shouldn't be thinking in terms of the next issue; they should be focused on their next step in furthering their brand. It's no longer about print subscribers (who are in short supply and pay about $10 a year), but rather about finding new fans through unconventional platforms. Before Elle's starring role on "The City," the magazine's fashion director, Nina Garcia, became a household name on "Project Runway." She's since moved to Marie Claire, which has really boosted the fashion cred for the previously second-rate glossy.
Aside from their foray on "The Hills," Conde Nast has been pretty reluctant to invest in their brands outside of their print product. They have been famously slow to embrace the web — Vogue.com just started adding content last year while other fashion magazines have really benefited from expanding their online presence. Elle has a plethora of blogs, and creative director (and 'City' star) Joe Zee has over 33,000 followers on Twitter.
What helps, too, is that these behind-the-scenes views into the world of magazines reinforces the idea that the magazine industry is impossibly glamorous. A recent article in the New York Times, reg. required, noted a huge shift in teen girls aspirations away from modeling for magazines towards writing for magazines:
Ten years ago, when Amy Astley, then the beauty director of Vogue, began working on a prototype of a spinoff magazine for teenagers, the question she was most commonly asked by potential readers was this: “How can I become a fashion model?”… Now they ask how they can get her job.
The great irony is that more girls than ever want to see their names on a masthead, but there are fewer jobs than ever in print (and the salaries, ranging from $25,000-30,000 for entry level jobs, aren't entirely livable in NYC, much less while maintaining the lifestyle of girl like Whitney Port).
As long as magazines continue (or in the case of Vogue, begin) focusing some of their energy on the web and other media outlets, there will be jobs. Or, as a former magazine journalism major, at least that's what I'm hoping.
Categorized under: Magazines, TV